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This page intentionally left blank
SCIENCE, COLONIALISM, AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLES

At the intersection of indigenous studies, science studies, and legal studies

lies a tense web of political issues of vital concern for the survival of indige-
nous nations. Numerous historians of science have documented the vital role
of late-eighteenth- and nineteenth-century science as a part of statecraft, a
means of extending empire. This book follows imperialism into the present,
demonstrating how pursuit of knowledge of the natural world impacts, and is
impacted by, indigenous peoples rather than nation-states.
In extractive biocolonialism, the valued genetic resources and associated
agricultural and medicinal knowledge of indigenous peoples are sought,
legally converted into private intellectual property, transformed into commodi-
ties, and then placed for sale in genetic marketplaces. Science, Colonialism,
and Indigenous Peoples critically examines these developments, demonstrating
how contemporary relations between indigenous and western knowledge sys-
tems continue to be shaped by the dynamics of power, the politics of property,
and the apologetics of law.

Laurelyn Whitt received a Ph.D. in Philosophy, with a specialization in Phi-

losophy of Science, from the University of Western Ontario. She teaches
Native Studies and Philosophy at Brandon University and has held visiting
appointments in the Department of Maori Studies, University of Auckland;
the Department of Science and Technology Studies, Cornell University; the
University of Notre Dame Law School; and Osgoode Hall Law School. Profes-
sor Whitt is the coauthor (with Alan W. Clarke) of The Bitter Fruit of American
Justice and the author of Interstices, a collection of poetry that won the 2005
Holland Poetry Prize.
Science, Colonialism, and
Indigenous Peoples
THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF LAW
AND KNOWLEDGE

Laurelyn Whitt
Brandon University
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore,
São Paulo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo

Cambridge University Press

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521119535
© Laurelyn Whitt 2009

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the

provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part
may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published in print format 2009

ISBN-13 978-0-511-65156-4 eBook (NetLibrary)

ISBN-13 978-0-521-11953-5 Hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy

of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication,
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
This book is dedicated to Waerete Norman.

E te hoa o ngä wähine whänui o te ao,

takoto mai rä i tö waka o te mate.

E te karanga maha,
e te kaipupuri i te mana wahine o te Tai Tokerau,
moe mai rä i waenga i ngä koiwi o öu mätua, tüpuna.

Ka tangi tonu atu rä mö te rironga horo atu,

kähore nei i tatari kia rongo anö
i te tangi a te pı̈pı̈wharauroa o te koanga,
i te tangi a te tätarakihi o te raumati.

Kua moe rä to tinana,

kua whakangaro atu to wairua ki tua o Te Arai,
ki tua atu o Te Reinga,
ki Hawaiki wairua.

Takoto mai rä, moea te moenga roa e Waireti,

te moenga të whakaarahia.

Pai märire.
– Patu Hohepa
 The dream of reason did not take power into account.
– Paul Starr1

1 Paul Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine (New York: Basic Books, 1982): 3.
Contents

Preface page ix
Acknowledgments xi
First Words xiii

PART I. BIOCOLONIALISM AS IMPERIAL SCIENCE 1

1 Imperialism Then and Now 3
2 Indigenous Knowledge, Power, and Responsibility 29
3 Value-Neutrality and Value-Bifurcation: The Cultural
Politics of Science 57

PART II. THE HUMAN GENOME DIVERSITY PROJECT: A CASE STUDY 81

4 The Rhetoric of Research Justification 84
5 Indigenist Critiques of Biocolonialism 105

PART III. LEGITIMATION: THE RULE AND ROLE OF LAW 133

6 The Commodification of Knowledge 136
7 Intellectual Property Rights as Means and Mechanism
of Imperialism 157
8 Transforming Sovereignties 179
Conclusion – The Politics of Knowledge: Resistance
and Recovery 219

Bibliography 225
Index 255

vii
Preface

Since this book began many years ago, many lives have passed through
mine and so through it. Before this book began, many others brought me to
it. All of these are still with me, though some only in memory. Gratefulness
is not enough, but it is what I have; I offer it now.
To my parents, and theirs, and theirs before them.
To my spouse and friend, Alan Clarke, for the gift of his good heart and
strong mind.
To my coauthors – Waerete Norman, Mere Roberts, Vicki Grieves, and
Jennifer Daryl Slack – who have generously allowed me to borrow from
our work together here.
To my elders, mentors, and teachers – especially Bev and Adam Lussier,
Sa’ke’j Youngblood Henderson, and Iris Marion Young – for supporting
and believing in me.
To my colleague and friend, Scott Abbott, who quietly, graciously, and
selflessly, makes so much possible.
To those who lent strength, advice, and encouragement, in various
forms, along the way, especially Wade Chambers, Don Grinde, Dale
Jamieson, David Lyons, Thomas Norton-Smith, Scott Pratt, Marilyn
Vogler, and Kari Winter.
To my research assistant – Asdaadooitsada (Camille Begay Benally) –
who worked on references, and told me stories, while the children
slept.
To Elspeth Pope, for the shelter of the northwoods, and her indexing
advice.
To Patu Hohepa, for the lovely poroporoaki in honor of Waerete.

ix
x Preface

To Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, for the politics in his art and the art in
his politics, and especially for the use of “Red Man Watching White Man
Trying to Fix Hole in Sky.”
And to all the four-legged companions who have found their way to me
and enriched my life. Yakoke.
Finally, various institutions extended fellowships, grants, and visiting
appointments that enabled me to do the research needed to bring this
book to completion. These include the George A. and Eliza Howard
Foundation; the University of Auckland Foundation and the Department
of Maori Studies; the Humanities Research Centre of the Australian
National University; the Research School of Social Sciences at the
Australian National University; Michigan Technological University; Utah
Valley University; Cornell University and the Department of Science
and Technology Studies; the University of Notre Dame Law School; and
Osgoode Hall Law School.
Acknowledgments

Parts of this book have appeared, sometimes with updated research and
revisions, in the articles listed below. In addition, several of these articles list
coauthors (Waerete Norman, Mere Roberts, Vicki Grieves, and Jennifer
Daryl Slack), who have kindly agreed to their use in this book. Their
contributions are gratefully acknowledged.

Laurelyn Whitt, “Knowledge Systems of Indigenous America,” in

Helaine Selin (ed.), Encyclopaedia of the History of Science,
Technology and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures (Dordrecht, The
Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2008): 1184–94.
Laurie Anne Whitt, “Sovereignty and Human Rights,” National Lawyers’
Guild Practitioner, 60:3 (Spring 2003): 90–4.
Laurie Anne Whitt, Mere Roberts, Waerete Norman, and Vicki Grieves,
“Belonging to Land: Indigenous Knowledge Systems and the Natural
World,” Oklahoma City University Law Review, 26:2 (2001): 701–43.
Laurie Anne Whitt, Mere Roberts, Waerete Norman, and Vicki Grieves,
“Indigenous Perspectives,” in Dale Jamieson (ed.), A Companion to
Environmental Philosophy (Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 2000): 3–20.
Laurie Anne Whitt, “Value-Bifurcation in Bioscience: The Rhetoric of
Research Justification,” Perspectives on Science: Historical,
Philosophical, Social, 7:4 (1999): 413–46.
Laurie Anne Whitt, “Metaphor and Power in Indigenous and Western
Knowledge Systems,” in Darrell Posey (ed.), Cultural and Spiritual
Values of Biodiversity (A Complementary Contribution to the Global
Biodiversity Assessment for the United Nations Environmental

xi
xii Acknowledgments

Programme) (London, UK: Intermediate Technology Publications,

1999): 69–72.
Laurie Anne Whitt, “Indigenous Peoples, Intellectual Property Law and
the New Imperial Science,” Oklahoma City University Law Review,
23:1 & 2 (1998): 211–59.
Laurie Anne Whitt, “Resisting Value-Bifurcation: Indigenist Critiques of
the Human Genome Diversity Project,”in Ann Ferguson and Bat Ami
Bar-On (eds.), Daring To Be Good: Feminist Essays in Ethico-Politics
(Oxford, UK: Routledge, Chapman and Hall, 1998): 70–86.
Laurie Anne Whitt, “Biocolonialism and the Commodification of
Knowledge,” Science as Culture, 7:1 (1998): 33–67.
Laurie Anne Whitt, “Cultural Imperialism and the Marketing of Native
America,” Reprinted from The American Indian Culture and Research
Journal, Volume 19, Number 3 (1995): 1–31, by permission of the
American Indian Studies Center, UCLA © Regents of the University of
California.
Laurie Anne Whitt, “Indigenous Peoples and the Cultural Politics of
Knowledge,” in Michael Green (ed.), Issues in American Indian
Cultural Identity (New York: Peter Lang, 1995): 223–71.
Laurie Anne Whitt and Jennifer Daryl Slack, “Communities,
Environments, and Cultural Studies,” Cultural Studies, 8:1 (January
1994): 5–31. The Web site for Cultural Studies is
http://informaworld.com.
First Words

This book speaks to political issues that lie at the intersection of indige-
nous studies, science studies, and legal studies, focusing in particular on
the role of power in shaping the interaction of indigenous and western
knowledge systems. Pursuit of knowledge of the natural world has long
been politicized. In some cases this has been subdued, a matter of inflec-
tion; in others it has been more pronounced, a dominant and dominating
agenda for research. The vital role of science as a part of statecraft has
been underscored by numerous historians of science,1 who, in the latter
part of the twentieth century, began to document the “issues of cultural
and economic domination involved in the pursuit of natural knowledge.”2
The rule of law, they argue, was identified with the scientific method and
became, for the West, a vital means of extending empire.3 The conduct

1 See, especially, Nathan Reingold and Marc Rothenberg (eds.), Scientific Colonialism (Wash-
ington, DC: Smithsonian Press, 1987); Roy MacLeod and Philip F. Rehbock (eds.), Nature
in Its Greatest Extent: Western Science in the Pacific (Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawaii
Press, 1988); Roy MacLeod, “Reading the Discourse of Colonial Science,” in Patrick Petitjean
(ed.), Les Sciences Coloniales: Figures et Institutions (Paris: ORSTOM, 1996): 87–96; Roy
MacLeod, “On Science and Colonialism,” Science and Society in Ireland: The Social Context
of Science and Technology in Ireland, 1800–1950 (Belfast: Queen’s University, 1997) 1–17; Roy
MacLeod, “On Visiting the ‘Moving Metropolis’: Reflections on the Architecture of Imperial
Science,” Historical Records of Australian Science, 5 (1982): 1–16; David Wade Chambers,
“Locality and Science: Myths of Centre and Periphery,” in A. Lafuents, A. Elena, and M.L.
Ortega (eds.), Mundializacı́on de la cencia y cultura nacional (Madrid: Ediciones Doce Calles,
1993): 605–17; David Wade Chambers, “Does Distance Tyrannize Science?” in R. W. Home
and S. K. Kohlstedt (eds.), International Science and National Scientific Identity (Dordrecht,
The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991): 19–38.
2 MacLeod, “On Visiting,” 14.
3 As Roy MacLeod notes: “If imperial unity was the desired end, scientific unity was the one
universally acceptable means . . . Scientific method would . . . unite empire, in unity of truth,
of tradition and of leadership” (Ibid., 12).

xiii
xiv First Words

of imperial science by nation-states during the late eighteenth and nine-

teenth centuries, and its effect upon other nation-states, has led historians
of science to conclude that the issue is no longer science in imperial history
but science as imperial history.4
My concern here is with the continuation of one strand of that history
into the present, with how a new imperial science impacts, and is impacted
by, indigenous peoples rather than nation-states. Certain areas of contem-
porary bioscience, currently in the service of western pharmaceutical and
agricultural industries, are enabling the appropriation of indigenous knowl-
edge and genetic resources at a prodigious and escalating rate. Opposition
to such biocolonialism has not only been vigorous, but international in
scope. My aim is to further and deepen such resistance by demonstrating
how biocolonialism arises from the ideology, the policies, and the practices
of a new imperial science, marked by the confluence of science with cap-
italism – a relationship mediated by a distinctively American, increasingly
international, intellectual property system.
The political role of imperial science – the ways in which it supports and
sustains the complex system of practices that constitutes the oppression
of indigenous peoples – figures prominently in indigenist critiques of
biocolonialism.5 These critiques directly challenge the ideology which
sustains and provides the justificatory rhetoric for the policies and practices
of certain areas of western bioscience. Reflecting its origins, this ideology is
described in Part I as neopositivist. It relies heavily upon both assertions and
assumptions of value-neutrality, wields an untenable distinction between
pure and applied science, and readily and unreflectively engages in value-
bifurcation, demarcating and separating the ethical from the political.
The result is an apolitical ethics of science, where issues of power
in ethics are either overlooked altogether or are diverted. It has also in
some cases produced an amoral politics of science, as well as a focus
on science “policy” rather than on the politics of science. Talk of how
politics and power enter into the origins and development of science, into

4 Ibid., 2.
5 Indigenism critiques the diverse power relations and dynamics that facilitate and maintain
the oppression of indigenous peoples. It stresses the existence, effectiveness, and potential of
indigenous agency in resisting oppression and in formulating concrete proposals for securing
justice.
First Words xv

scientific knowledge production is effectively silenced, and the rhetorical

props for legitimating biocolonialism are set in place. Part II looks closely
at the operation of this neopositivist ideology, offering a case study of a
recent biocolonialist research program – the Human Genome Diversity
Project.
Part III takes up at greater length the pivotal role played by the rule of
law, and specifically of U.S. intellectual property law, in this story. The
latter enables, and provides a patina of justification for, scientific policies
and practices that, directly or indirectly, service the needs of powerful cor-
porations. The microworld “factories” of the new imperial science have
become crucial outposts in the establishment of an international intellec-
tual property rights regime primed to serve the interests of biocolonialism.
The hope of ending such practices rests in part upon our ability to move
past current oppressive, and well-entrenched, understandings of sovereign
power. Indigenous responses to biocolonialism include efforts to transform
the concept and practice of sovereignty. These are, as we will see, helping
to unify and transform indigenous communities politically.
Some vexing terminological and conceptual issues will remain sub-
merged in my discussion of these matters. I will, for example, often con-
trast indigenous with western knowledge systems, especially in Part I. To
speak of a knowledge system is to abandon the idea that a single epis-
temology is universally shared by, or applicable to, all humans insofar
as they are human.6 It facilitates instead a cultural parsing of the con-
cept of epistemology, suitable to the heterogeneity of knowledge. There
are specific epistemologies that belong to culturally distinctive ways of
knowing.7
There are multiple ways of comparing and contrasting knowledge sys-
tems. My own preference for western and indigenous, or alternatively, dom-
inant and subordinated, as terms of contrast is a political one; it is responsive
to the role of power within, and the power differential among, knowledge

6 I do not defend my adoption of this term here, but note that my use of it is itself at odds with
the view of knowledge within the dominant knowledge system. Many who accept that system
will insist on an extended defense. I will disappoint them here.
7 For further discussion of characteristics of knowledge systems, see Stephen A. Marglin,
“Toward the Decolonization of the Mind” and “Losing Touch,” in Frédérique Apffel Mar-
glin and Stephen Marglin (eds.), Dominating Knowledge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990),
especially 232–3.
xvi First Words

systems. Other commonly adopted options – articulate/tacit, theoretical/

practical, scientific/traditional – seem questionable if not objectionable,
especially insofar as they are intended to reflect differences between forms
of knowledge within indigenous and western cultures.8
Although speaking of a “dominant” knowledge system aptly captures the
realities of power, for various reasons – including the exportation of this
knowledge system beyond the geographic confines of the West – “western”
is neither exact nor fully equivalent to it. By “dominant” knowledge system,
I have in mind a fairly specific but enormously influential strain of the
western intellectual heritage. Referred to as “positivism” in its earliest
incarnation,9 I am more concerned here with its current “neopositivist”
manifestation.10 Although purportedly dead as a movement, the spirit of
positivism continues to haunt much of western science and philosophy.
Nevertheless, the diversity and non-unitary character of both “indige-
nous” and “western” must be acknowledged, and indeed, stressed. There
are differences within, and similarities across, western and indigenous
knowledge systems that confound any attempt to cast the contrast as a
simple dichotomy. Indeed, after years of supposing otherwise, there is
now growing acknowledgment among scholars “that there are no sim-
ple or universal criteria that can be deployed to separate indigenous

8 For some discussion of these issues, see Thomas Heyd, “Indigenous Knowledge, Emancipation
and Alienation,” Knowledge and Policy, 8 (1995): 63–73; Arun Agrawal, “Indigenous and
Scientific Knowledge: Some Critical Comments,” Indigenous Knowledge and Development
Monitor, 3 (1995): 3–6; “Editorial,” Indigenous Knowledge and Development Monitor, 4 (1996):
1; and “Comments on Article by Arun Agrawal,” Indigenous Knowledge and Development
Monitor, 4 (1996): 12–19.
9 A sprawling and lingering intellectual tradition, positivism has made itself felt in one guise or
another for more than a century and a half. As one notable commentator of the phenomenon
observes, it is, like any other tradition, “a diverse movement, with its dissidents and stalwarts,
its ortho- and heterodoxies.” Robert N. Proctor, Value-Free Science? Purity and Power in
Modern Knowledge (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1991): 162. There
are positivist theories of law, of economics, of literature, of sociology, of religion, of ethics,
and of science. There is the Comtean positivism of the 1830s, the neo-Kantian positivism
of the last half of the nineteenth century, and the logical positivism of the early and mid-
twentieth century. Although recent developments have significantly undermined its hold on
the academic community, the elements of it noted here are part of its thriving legacy.
10 References to the “legacy of positivism” abound. For two recent examples, see Dale Jamieson,
“The Poverty of Postmodernism,” University of Colorado Law Review, 62:3 (1991): 577–95 and
Steve Fuller, Philosophy, Rhetoric and the End of Knowledge (Madison, Wisconsin: University
of Wisconsin Press, 1993).
First Words xvii

knowledge from western or scientific knowledge.”11 Such oppositions often

oversimplify, blurring “the actual fluidity and permeability of knowledge
and cultural boundaries.”12 Moreover, given the global presence of some
5000 distinctive indigenous cultures, reference to an “indigenous” knowl-
edge system – even if one confined its scope to Native North America as
I tend to do here – is empirically tenuous at best. It is crucial to acknowl-
edge the specific circumstances that have shaped and differentiated the
knowledge systems of indigenous peoples, and that continue to do so. As
one commentator notes,
[I]ndigenous knowledge is formed from a complex intertwining of
knowledge and traditions and practices through the engagement of
indigenous and nonindigenous peoples. Far from being considered
a unitary, homogenous entity . . . indigenous knowledge must instead
be understood as contingent, historically situated, and particular to
the specifics of locality, group dynamics, place and time.13
It would, however, be historically and politically myopic to see only
differences. Concrete diversity does not preclude commonality or com-
munity; there is much that binds indigenous peoples together. There are
shared conditions, shared responsibilities, and a shared struggle: “Indian-
ness . . . is reinforced by the common experience of almost five centuries of
[Eurocentric] domination . . . The differences between these diverse peo-
ples (or ethnic groups) have been accentuated by the colonizers as part
of the strategy of domination.”14 Or, as Gail Tremblay (Iroquois/Micmac)
observes, each of us

comes from a people who has also had the experience of facing
the forces of colonization by outsiders and has been subjected to
11 Arun Agrawal, “On Power and Indigenous Knowledge,” in Darrell A. Posey (ed.), Cultural
and Spiritual Values of Biodiversity (London: United Nations Environmental Programme
Intermediate Technology Publication, 1999): 177.
12 Stephen B. Brush and Doreen Stabinsky (eds.), Valuing Local Knowledge: Indigenous People
and Intellectual Property Rights (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1996): 6.
13 Michael Davis, “Bridging the Gap or Crossing a Bridge? Indigenous Knowledge and the
Language of Law and Policy,” paper presented to the “Bridging Scales and Epistemologies
Conference,” Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Alexandria, Egypt, 17–20 May 2004. Accessible online
at: http://www.millenniumassessment.org/documents/bridging/papers/davis.michael.pdf.
14 Guillermo Bonfil Batalla, Utopia y Revolucı́on: El Pensamiento Politico Contemporàneo de los
Indios en América Latina (Mexico: Editorial Nueva Imagen, SA, 1981): 37–8. Translation by
Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz.
xviii First Words

attempts at physical and cultural genocide. Each knows the pressure to

assimilate to other cultural patterns, and the pain of loss that has been
handed down across the generations of people since contact . . . So it
is that coming from such diverse cultures, we can join together to say,
we are one.15

15 Gail Tremblay, “Statement for Exhibition of Contemporary Native American Art, ‘We Are
Many, We Are One,’ ” curated by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (1997).
PART

BIOCOLONIALISM AS IMPERIAL SCIENCE

Biocolonialism is in many respects more of the same – a continuation of

the oppressive power relations that have historically informed the inter-
actions of western and indigenous cultures, and part of a continuum of
contemporary practices that constitute forms of cultural imperialism.1 The
first three chapters contextualize biocolonialism over time and within the
broad range of these ongoing cultural practices. The phenomenon of
cultural imperialism is addressed and critiqued. It is demonstrated to be
consistent with (indeed, a continuation of) earlier forms of imperialism,
and a preliminary sketch of biocolonialism is offered. The latter is then
situated within the larger political struggles that have long inflected the
relationship between dominant and indigenous knowledge systems.
The deep offensiveness and cultural destructiveness of biocolonialist
practices can only be fully appreciated by seeing how profoundly they clash
with many of the values and commitments that characterize and distin-
guish indigenous knowledge systems. The commodification of knowledge
and of genetic resources that biocolonialism facilitates is sharply at odds
with the web of prescriptions and proscriptions that guide the process of
knowing within indigenous contexts. It also clashes directly with the role
responsibilities toward the natural world that many indigenous peoples
have historically assumed. The ideology that sustains biocolonialism is, in

1 In making this claim, however, I do not mean to imply that imperialism itself, and the oppressive
power relations it engenders and instantiates, have not themselves undergone significant and
extensive change over the last several centuries. A range of substantive political transformations,
as well as the globalized nature of contemporary economic and cultural exchanges, have
unquestionably altered how imperialism manifests itself, how it impacts the lives of those it
subordinates, and how it is in turn impacted by them.

1
2 Science, Colonialism, and Indigenous Peoples

turn, rooted in the neopositivist assumption of value neutrality and in a

practice of value bifurcation which together enable it to deflect ethical
and political critique. It both facilitates the marginalization of indigenous
knowledge systems and provides thereby a legitimating rationale for bio-
colonialist practice.
 1

Imperialism Then and Now

Introduction: Some Exhibits

An exhibit, in a court of law, is anything other than oral testimony that is

placed before the fact finder to be admitted as evidence in a case. This
chapter opens with four exhibits, best marked for identification as diverse
instances of cultural imperialism. Cultural imperialism1 is one of a number
of oppressive relations that may hold between dominant and subordinated
cultures. Whether or not conscious and intentional, it serves to extend the
political power, secure the social control, and further the economic profit of
the dominant culture. Ultimately, it facilitates a type of cultural acquisition
via conceptual, even material, assimilation; the dominant culture seeks
to establish itself in indigenous cultures by appropriating, mining, and
redefining what is distinctive in, or constitutive of, them. The mechanism

1 Various radical theorists and social critics have alluded to cultural imperialism, although few
characterize it at length. My discussion differs somewhat from that of Iris Marion Young
(“Five Faces of Oppression,” in Thomas Wartenberg (ed.), Rethinking Power (Albany, New
York: SUNY Press, 1992)). I agree with her that it is one of several forms of oppression, but
I emphasize its impact on the cultures, rather than the individuals, subjected to it. I move
freely here between references to indigenous cultures generally, and native North American
cultures more specifically, because the practice of cultural imperialism under consideration
is similarly imposed upon them. However, closer analyses of how specific historical, political,
cultural, and socioeconomic circumstances condition and modify such practice are needed.
Within world-systems theory, Herbert Schiller describes cultural imperialism as “The sum
of the processes by which a society is brought into the world system and how its dominating
stratum is attracted, pressured, forced, and sometimes bribed into shaping social institutions
to correspond to, or even promote, the values and structures of the dominating center of
the system.” Communication and Cultural Domination (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1976): 9.
For an excellent collection of contemporary essays on this topic, see Bernd Hamm and
Russell Smandych (eds.), Cultural Imperialism: Essays on the Political Economy of Cultural
Domination (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2005).

3
4 Science, Colonialism, and Indigenous Peoples

for this, as we will see, is an oft-repeated pattern of cultural subordination

that turns vitally on legal and popular views of ownership and property, as
formulated within the dominant culture.
Exhibit One records two recent events. In 1991, at a large gathering in
California, a leading figure of the New Age movement announced to the
assembled audience that he intended to patent the sweat lodge ceremony
because native people were no longer performing it correctly.2 Several
years later, at a meeting of indigenous support groups in Geneva, the
young Europeans in attendance were informed of the passing of a respected
Muskogee Creek medicine man, widely known for his defense of the right
of American Indians to retain control of their own spiritual ceremonies.
On learning of his death, “they were heard to openly rejoice.”3
Exhibit Two documents a controversy in Kansas over the skeletal
remains of 146 Smoky Hill River people that were transformed into a
tourist site, known as the Salina Burial Pit, visited by thousands each year.
Cultural descendants of these people – including the Pawnee, Wichita,
Mandan, Arikara, and Hidatsa – protested this as a racist violation of com-
mon human decency. Some scientists and historians, however, maintain
that such human remains are vital for research and education. According to
one of them: “It’s an issue all over the United States . . . a real clash between
science and religion. . . . There is a concerted effort by American Indians
to shut down archaeology all over the country.”4 Walter Echo-Hawk, a
lawyer with the Native American Rights Fund, sees it differently:

There appears to be a loophole in legal protections and social policies

that tends to permit disparate treatment of dead bodies and graves
based on race. . . . If you desecrate an Indian grave, you get a Ph.D.
But if you desecrate a white grave, you wind up sitting in prison.5

Exhibit Three concerns the Guajajara. Their medical knowledge has

long prescribed the use of a plant, the Latin name of which is Pilocarpus
jaborandi, to treat glaucoma. That they are no longer able to use it is the
direct result of biocolonialism. Pilocarpus populations have been virtually
2 This was related by Robert Antone in “Education as a Vehicle for Values and Sovereignty,” an
address given at the Third International Native American Studies Conference at Lake Superior
State University in October 1991.
3 José Barreiro, “The Search for Lessons,” Akwe:kon, Vol. IX, No. 2 (1992): 22.
4 Cited in Larry Fruhling, “Culture Collides With Archaeology Over Ancestors Graves,” The
Santa Fe New Maxican (23 April, 1989): C4.
5 Ibid.
Imperialism Then and Now 5

depleted as Brazil has exported it for some $25 million annually, and
corporations holding patents derived from it have earned far more. As for
the Guajajara, they have been subjected to debt peonage and slavery by
the agents of the companies involved in the trade.6
Exhibit Four is a photograph of a Guaymi Indian woman whose name
is being kept secret. If she is alive today, she is well into middle age.
Diagnosed with leukemia in 1991, she sought treatment in a hospital in
Panama City. While there, samples of her blood were drawn and her
cell line was “immortalized” and stored in the United States, without
her knowledge or consent. Two American scientists, listing themselves as
“inventors” of her cell line, applied for its patent in 1993 and placed her
cell line on sale at the American Type Culture Collection for $136. They
did so on behalf of the Center for Disease Control because of the cell line’s
commercial promise and because the government encourages scientists to
patent anything of interest. According to one of them,
I think that most people wouldn’t understand all the details of all the
laboratory work that was being done and I don’t think anyone ever
really felt it was necessary . . . So in terms of specifically notifying the
Guaymi that a patent application was being put forth, I don’t think
that was done. But again, mainly because I don’t think anyone ever
felt it was really necessary.7
Exhibits Three and Four, concrete examples of biocolonialism, share
important contextual features with the first two. All four Exhibits attest
to the conflict of knowledge systems within contemporary dominant and
indigenous cultures, and to the existence of oppressive relations of power
which promote such conflict. All four involve struggles over the politics
of ownership – respectively, of spiritual knowledge, of human remains, of
plant genetic resources and medicinal knowledge, and of human genetic
resources. All four demonstrate the intervention of western property law in
6 Darrell Addison Posey, “Biodiversity, Genetic Resources, and Indigenous Peoples in Amazo-
nia.” Prepared for: Amazonia 2000: Development, Environment, and Geopolitics. Institute
of Latin American Studies, University of London (24–26 June 1998). Available online at:
http://www.ubcic.bc.ca/files/PDF/Posey_Biodiversity.pdf.
7 Jonathan Kaplan, “Who Owns Life?: Patenting Human Genes,” Living On Earth (World
Media Foundation, transcript of 13 May 1994). See also Philip Bereano, “Body and Soul: The
Price of Biotech,” Seattle Times, 20 August 1995, B5 and Philip Bereano, “The Race to Own
DNA: Guaymi Tribe Was Surprised They Were Invented: Part II,” Seattle Times, 27 August
1995, B5. The U.S. Commerce Department abandoned its application in 1993, following
extensive protests by indigenous peoples, among others.
6 Science, Colonialism, and Indigenous Peoples

a manner that privileges the already powerful and violates the sovereignty
of indigenous peoples.
Because an important strain of the indigenist response to biocolonial-
ism turns on spiritual beliefs about the nature of life and about human
responsibilities within the natural world, it is appropriate to begin with
an analysis of Exhibit One. The commodification of indigenous spiritu-
ality is a paradigmatic instance of cultural imperialism. As such, it plays
a politically vital, diversionary role, serving to colonize and assimilate the
knowledge and belief systems of indigenous cultures.

Marketing Native America

Whether peddled by white shamans, plastic medicine men and women,

opportunistic academics, entrepreneurs, or enterprising New Agers, Indian
spirituality – like Indian lands before it – is rapidly being reduced to the
status of a commodity, seized, and sold. Sacred ceremonies and cere-
monial objects can be purchased at weekend medicine conferences or via
mail-order catalogs. How-to books with veritable recipes for conducting
traditional rituals are written and dispensed by trade publishers. A succes-
sion of born-again medicine people have – with greater or lesser subtlety –
set themselves and their services up for hire, ready to sell their spiritual
knowledge and power to anyone willing and able to meet their price. And
a literary cult of Indian identity appropriation known as white shamanism
continues to be practiced. Instead of contributing to the many Native-run
organizations devoted to enhancing the lives and prospects of Indian
people, New Agers are regularly enticed into contributing to the continued
expropriation and exploitation of Native culture by purchasing an array
of items marketed as means for enhancing their knowledge of Indian
spirituality.8
Recently, the National Congress of American Indians (an organization
not exactly known for radicalism), issued a “declaration of war” against
“non-Indian wannabes, hucksters, cultists, commercial profiteers and self-
styled New Age shamans” who have been exploiting sacred knowledge
and rituals.9 Throughout Indian Country, eloquent, forceful critiques of
8 For a discussion of the New Age (especially as it bears on the marketing of indigenous
spirituality), and for a survey of many of its products and practitioners (and prices!), see Lisa
Aldred, “Plastic Shamans and Astroturf Sun Dance,” American Indian Quarterly 24:3 (2000).
9 David Johnston, “Spiritual Seekers Borrow Indian Ways,” New York Times, 27 December 1993,
A15.
Imperialism Then and Now 7

these cultural developments have been mounted by writers, intellectuals,

activists, and spiritual leaders. The phenomena being protested are diverse
and include literary, artistic, scholarly, and commercial products intended
for consumption in the markets of popular culture as well as in those of
the cultural elite.10
When the spiritual knowledge, rituals, and objects of historically subor-
dinated cultures are transformed into commodities, economic and politi-
cal powers merge to produce cultural imperialism. A form of oppression
exerted by a dominant society upon other cultures, and typically a source
of economic profit, cultural imperialism secures and deepens the sub-
ordinated status of those cultures. In the case of indigenous cultures, it
undermines their integrity and distinctiveness, assimilating them into the
dominant culture by seizing and processing vital cultural resources, then
remaking them in the image and marketplaces of the dominant culture.
Such “taking of the essentials of cultural lifeways,” Geary Hobson observes,
“is as imperialistic as those simpler forms of theft, such as the theft of home-
land by treaty.”11
It is a phenomenon that spans North America, sparking the fierce
resistance of indigenous people in Canada, as well as the United States.
Lenore Keeshig-Tobias, a Toronto-based Anishinabe poet and storyteller,
is a founding member of the Committee to Re-Establish the Trickster,
an organization devoted to reclaiming the native voice in literature. The
Canadian cultural industry, she protests,

is stealing – unconsciously, perhaps, but with the same devastating

results – native stories as surely as the missionaries stole our religion
and the politicians stole our land and the residential schools stole our
language . . . (it) amount(s) to cultural theft, theft of voice.12

10 Christopher Lind misses the nature of this protest and of the “claim being made by aboriginal
artists and writers of colour . . . that whites are ‘stealing’ their stories.” See “The Idea of Capital-
ism or the Capitalism of Ideas? A Moral Critique of the Copyright Act,” Intellectual Property
Journal, 7 (December 1991): 69. He insists that “(w)hat is being stolen is not the story itself but
the market for the story . . . or the possibility of being able to exploit the commercial potential”
(ibid.) of the story. Indigenous critiques are directed against the very fact of commercialization,
against the extension of the market mechanism to these cultural materials by the dominant
society. The claim being made is that this continues and extends a long history of oppression,
that it constitutes theft of culture, of voice, of power.
11 Geary Hobson (ed.), The Remembered Earth: An Anthology of Contemporary Native American
Literature (Albuquerque, New Mexico: University of New Mexico Press, 1979): 101.
12 Lenore Keeshig-Tobias, “Stop stealing native stories,” Toronto Globe and Mail, 26 January
1990, A7.
8 Science, Colonialism, and Indigenous Peoples

Wendy Rose makes it plain that the issue here is not that “only Indians
can make valid observations on themselves” and their cultures, rather, it is
“one of integrity and intent”:

We accept as given that whites have as much prerogative to write and

speak about us and our cultures as we have to write and speak about
them and theirs. The question is how this is done and . . . why it is
done.13

Some forms of cultural imperialism are the products of aca-

demic privilege and opportunism. The “name of Truth or Scholar-
ship”14 may be invoked, the cause of scholarly progress, of advancing
knowledge.15 Anishinabe author Gerald Vizenor reproaches the “cul-
ture cultists (who) have hatched and possessed distorted images of tribal

13 Wendy Rose, “The Great Pretenders,” in M. Annette Jaimes (ed.), The State of Native America
(Boston, Massachusetts: South End Press, 1992): 415–16.
14 Hobson, The Remembered Earth, 101.
15 Cultural imperialism is often at its apex in the academy. As a result of the stubborn influence
of positivism, knowledge claims within the dominant (academic) culture continue to be
regarded as value free, as we consider at length in Chapter 3. An instructive example of this is
Wilcomb Washburn’s “Distinguishing History from Moral Philosophy and Public Advocacy,”
in Calvin Martin (ed.), The American Indian and the Problem of History (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1987). A past president of the American Society for Ethnohistory, Washburn
is particularly upset about “the process of using history to promote non-historical causes.” He
reacts with consternation to the call for historians to “form alliances with non-scholarly groups
organized for action to solve specified societal problems,” which he associates with “leftist
academics” and “Indian activists.”(p. 95)
Washburn offers himself as an example of an historian committed to what one is tempted
to call a Great White Truth, a Truth properly cleansed of all values:
all my efforts are guided by, and subject to, the limitations of historical truth . . . There
is no place in the scholarly profession of history for such distorting lenses. History to me
means a commitment to truth . . . however contradictory it may be to our . . . acquired
convictions about how the world should be. (p. 97)
He assumes that his work, like his conception of truth, is unburdened by such distorting
lenses, and remains both value free and politically neutral. Yet note that this work includes
his “recent experiences in writing Indian history, which involve combat with radical theo-
rists on the ideological front,” his letters to the Dartmouth Review in support of the use of
the Indian as a symbol, his efforts abroad to “justify United States policy . . . to spike asser-
tions of genocide . . . to disprove the assertion that . . . multinational corporations control the
United States Government and seek to exploit the resources of all native peoples against
their will.” (p. 94) All this, we are to suppose, is ‘value free.’ He goes on to claim that
some will recognize his “lifelong and quixotic pursuit of the reality of the Indian as ‘noble.’”
(p. 97)
Imperialism Then and Now 9

cultures.”16 Their obsession with the tribal past, he contends, “is not an
innocent collection of arrowheads, not a crude map of public camp sites
in sacred places, but rather a statement of academic power and control
over tribal images.”17 Sometimes the “cause” is one of ethical progress, of
moral duty: “Given the state of the world today, we all have not only the
right but the obligation to pursue all forms of spiritual insight . . . it seems
to me that I have as much right to pursue and articulate the belief system
of Native Americans as they do.”18 On this reading, the colonization of
indigenous knowledge and belief systems (and the attendant economic
profit that their repackaging brings in the marketplaces of the dominant
culture) is not only morally permissible, it is morally mandated.
Whatever its form, cultural imperialism often plays a diversionary role
that is politically advantageous because it serves to extend – while effec-
tively diverting attention from – the continued oppression of indigenous
peoples. Acoma Pueblo writer Simon Ortiz underscores this aspect of the
phenomenon. Condemning white shamanism as a “process of colonial-
ism” and a “usurping (of) the indigenous power of the people,” he charges
that:

symbols are taken and are popularized, diverting attention from real
issues about land and resources and Indian peoples’ working hours.
The real struggle is really what should be prominent, but no, it’s
much easier to talk about drums and feathers and ceremonies and
those sorts of things. “Real Indians,” but “real Indians” only in quotes,
stereotypes, and “interesting exotica” . . . So it’s a rip-off.19

Keeshig-Tobias refers to it as “escapist” and a “form of exorcism,” enabling

Canadians “to look to an ideal native living in never-never land” rather than
confront “the horrible reality of native-Canadian relations.”20 The extent to
which cultural imperialism turns on conceptual colonization, and what is
ultimately at stake in this, has been succinctly captured by Oneida scholar
16 Gerald Vizenor, “Socioacupuncture: Mythic Reversals and the Striptease in Four Scenes,”
in Calvin Martin (ed.), The American Indian and the Problem of History (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1987): 183.
17 Ibid.
18 Gary Snyder, as cited in Ward Churchill, Fantasies of the Master Race (Monroe, Maine:
Common Courage Press, 1992): 192.
19 Simon Ortiz in an interview in Laura Coltelli, Winged Words: American Indian Writers Speak
(Lincoln, Nebraska. University of Nebraska Press, 1990): 111–12.
20 Keeshig-Tobias, “Stop stealing,” 7.
10 Science, Colonialism, and Indigenous Peoples

Pam Colorado. She contends that the commodification of indigenous

spirituality enables the dominant culture to supplant Indian people even
in the area of their own spirituality. This process moves beyond ensuring
their physical subordination to securing absolute ideological/conceptual
subordination. If it continues, she observes:

Non-Indians will have complete power to define what is and is not

Indian, even for Indians . . . When this happens, the last vestiges of
real, Indian society and Indian rights will disappear. Non-Indians will
then “own” our heritage and ideas as thoroughly as they now claim
to own our land and resources.21

The Cultural Politics of Ownership

When confronted by their critics, those engaged in the marketing of Native

America frequently do attempt to justify their behavior. From their reason-
ing and rhetoric, we can elicit some distinctive features of this variant of
cultural imperialism. What we will find is a rationale that has reverberated
throughout the history of dominant–indigenous relations, one that starkly
reveals how the cultural politics of ownership are played out in the context
of oppression.
Consider Gary Snyder’s response to indigenous protests: “Spirituality
is not something that can be ‘owned’ like a car or a house,” he asserts.
It “belongs to all humanity equally.”22 Or consider Alberto Manguel’s
response to Keeshig-Tobias: “No one,” he contends, “can ‘steal’ a story
because stories don’t belong to anyone. Stories belong to everyone . . . No
one . . . has the right to instruct a writer as to what stories to tell.”23 Yet
those who write and copyright “native” stories, those white shamans who
sell poetry that “romanticize(s) their ‘power’ as writers to inhabit (Indian)
souls and consciousness,”24 and those culture capitalists who traffic in
“Indian” rituals and sacred objects are all clearly making individual profit
on what “no one” (allegedly) owns. Such responses are both diversionary
and delusionary. They attempt to dictate the terms of the debate by focusing

21 Pam Colorado, as cited in Ward Churchill, Fantasies, 101.

22 Snyder, as cited in Ward Churchill, Fantasies, 192.
23 Alberto Manguel, “Equal rights to stories,” Toronto Globe and Mail, 3 February 1990, D7.
24 Leslie Silko, as cited in Michael Castro, Interpreting the Indian (Albuquerque, New Mexico:
University of New Mexico Press, 1983): 161.
Imperialism Then and Now 11

attention on issues of freedom of speech and thought,25 and deflecting

it from the active commercial exploitation, and the historical realities of
power, that condition current dominant–indigenous relations. In the words
of Margo Thunderbird:

They came for our land, for what grew or could be grown on it, for
the resources in it, and for our clean air and pure water. They stole
these things from us . . . and now . . . they’ve come for the very last of
our possessions; now they want our pride, our history, our spiritual
traditions. They want to rewrite and remake these things, to claim
them for themselves.26

The colonists, indeed, displayed varying motivations regarding their pres-

ence and conduct in America, and they are similar to those presently
vending Native Americana. The prospect of profits from speculation lured
some to seize native lands; others, wanting to escape poverty and enhance
their lives, regarded themselves as merely “sharing” underused lands; most
found it convenient to believe that the indigenous inhabitants of this con-
tinent “could have no legitimate claims to land.”27
Analogous reasoning and rhetoric accompany numerous parallel tales
of acquisition in contemporary western–indigenous relations. By examin-
ing some of these, we can better elicit the specious “justificatory” appeals
on which cultural imperialism relies to extend and legitimize such prac-
tice. Their cumulative weight suggests that cultural imperialism, in its
late capitalist mode, requires a legitimating rationale, one that enables
the dominant culture to mask the fundamentally oppressive nature of its
treatment of subordinated cultures. This rationale is fashioned by invoking
legal and popular views of ownership and property prevalent in western
culture and conceptually imposing these upon indigenous cultures. It may
take one, and usually both, of two forms: an appeal to common property
and an appeal to private property.
In the first, the dominant culture enhances its political power, social
control, and economic profit by declaring the (material, cultural, genetic)
25 Appeals to the First Amendment are the most common response of New Agers to their
indigenist critics, according to the ethnographic fieldwork of Lisa Aldred, “Plastic Shamans,”
op. cit.
26 Margo Thunderbird, cited in Wendy Rose, “The Great Pretenders,” 403.
27 David Lyons, “The Balance of Injustice and the War for Independence,” Monthly Review, 45
(1994), 20.
12 Science, Colonialism, and Indigenous Peoples

resources of indigenous cultures to be common property, freely available to

everyone. Thus, whatever the dominant culture finds desirable in indige-
nous cultures is declared to be part of the “public domain.” The second
appeal accomplishes the same ends through opposing means – facilitating
privatization and the transformation of valued indigenous resources into
commodity form. These appeals, examples of which will be considered
below, lie at the heart of cultural imperialism and commonly function
in tandem, with the former preparing and paving the way for the lat-
ter. Through the development of the notion of intellectual property and
the articulation of intellectual property laws, the established legal system
extends and enforces the practice of cultural imperialism. The patent-
ing of indigenous genetic resources is a case in point. Before turning to
this, however, a few remarks about the historical antecedents of cultural
imperialism will be of value in illustrating the continuum of expropriative
strategies that are in play.
In an earlier day, imperial powers could appeal to three competing legal
theories of territorial acquisition to justify their claims to sovereignty over
new lands: occupation, conquest, and cession. The first of these, unlike
the other two, required that the land be terra nullius, devoid of people.
According to Blackstone, “if an uninhabited country be discovered and
planted by English subjects, all the English laws then in being . . . are
immediately there in force.”28 Declaring that the land belonged to no one
set the stage for its conversion into private or individual property – a legally
protected possession.
However, other legitimating rationales for the privatizing of property
were needed, particularly to accommodate types of property other than
land. By declaring the intellectual and cultural properties of indigenous
peoples to be in the public domain (i.e., to belong to everyone), the stage
is equally well set for their conversion into private property. These two
rationales (terra nullius and public domain) clearly resemble each other.
The notion of property belonging to no one is the functional equivalent
of that of property belonging to everyone; they both serve as the terms of
a conversion process that results in the privatization of property. However,
whereas the concept of terra nullius enabled the privatizing only of lands,
the notion that property in the public domain could come to be owned by

28 William Blackstone, 1 Commentaries on the Laws of England (1st edition, Oxford, 1765):
107–8.
Imperialism Then and Now 13

individuals applies to other types of property as well, such as intellectual and

cultural property. The latter conversion process may be regarded as a legal
theory of cultural acquisition, whereby western intellectual property rights
are invoked in the interests of cultural imperialism in order to appropriate
valued intangible indigenous resources.
The politics of property is the central historical dynamic mediating west-
ern and indigenous relations. Certainly one of the more obvious examples
of this is the General Allotment Act of 1887 that privatized communally
owned tribal lands. A more recent case is that of the struggle to protect
Newe Segobia (Western Shoshone homelands) from further encroach-
ment by the U.S. government. The politics of property, however, has
never been confined to land, as the struggle in Exhibit Two over the own-
ership of human remains demonstrates. Because the United States claims
title to all “cultural property” found on federal public lands, material items
of indigenous cultures discovered on these lands belong to the U.S. gov-
ernment, provided that they are at least 100 years old.29 This includes
human skeletal materials, which find themselves – together with these
other items – thereby transformed into the “archaeological resources” of
the dominant culture.30 Ultimate authority to regulate the disposition of
such “resources” rests with the Secretary of the Interior, according to the
Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979.31 Moreover, because the

29 Speaking of the Antiquities Act of 1906, Walter Echo-Hawk notes that

the underlying assumption . . . is that all “cultural resources” located on federal land
“belong” to the United States, and can be excavated only for the benefit of public
museums. There are no provisions for Native ownership or disposition. (Walter Echo-
Hawk, “Museum Rights Vs. Indian Rights: Guidelines for Assessing Competing Legal
Interests in Native Cultural Resources,” Review of Law and Social Change XIV (1986),
449. This article also offers a useful discussion of the American Indian Religious Freedom
Act, and its implications for ownership of native resources.)
The Antiquities Act has never been formally repealed, though it has been superseded by the
Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979.
30 The term “cultural property” is generally considered to include “objects of artistic, archaeo-
logical, ethnological, or historical interest” (John Merryman, “Two Ways of Thinking About
Cultural Property,” The American Journal of International Law, 80:4 (1986): 831). An “archae-
ological resource” refers to any material remains of past human life and activities that have
been determined to be of “archaeological interest.” 16 United States Code, Section 470bb(1).
James Riding In offers an excellent study of professional grave desecration, particularly in the
academic context. See his “Without Ethics and Morality: A Historical Overview of Imperial
Archaeology and American Indians,” Arizona State Law Journal, 24:1 (1992).
31 16 United States Code, Section 470(dd). However this Act, unlike the earlier Antiquities Act,
does require that Indian tribes be notified of any excavation permit that might cause harm to
the cultural sites. See 16 United States Code, Section 470cc(c).
14 Science, Colonialism, and Indigenous Peoples

majority of states do not strictly regulate the excavation of native graves and
sacred sites on state or private lands, private landowners have historically
been at liberty to sell, destroy, or otherwise dispose of any material remains
of indigenous cultures as they saw fit or profitable.32
Thus, whether it is legally permissible to dig up a grave, to display or
sell the contents of it, will depend in part on whether that grave is in an
Indian or non-Indian cemetery. This discriminatory treatment of skeletal
remains has been contested by various critics. C. Dean Higginbotham has
observed that “only the burial and religious sites of Native Americans are
regularly subjected to archaeological excavation and study in the United
States.”33 Walter Echo-Hawk concurs:

If human remains and burial offerings of Native people are so easily

desecrated and removed, wherever located, while the sanctity of the
final resting place of other races is strictly protected, it is obvious that
Native burial practices and associated beliefs were never considered
during the development of American property law.34

Cultural imperialism, then, embraces a spectrum of expropriative strate-

gies. At one end of this spectrum we find legal theories of acquisition
that facilitate the dominant culture’s ownership of indigenous land and
of the material remains of indigenous peoples within the land. At the
other end, we find theories of acquisition that rely on laws of intellec-
tual property to legitimate the privatization of less tangible indigenous
resources. We turn next to the type of case represented by Exhibit Three,
in which the legitimating rationale of public domain is invoked to provide
moral and legal cover for the theft of indigenous knowledge and genetic
resources.
32 Indeed, according to an article on a Colorado development known as “Indian Camp Ranch,”
prospective homeowners:
can now purchase land where more than 200 Anasazi sites have been identified . . . Those
who buy property . . . will also be allowed to excavate sites on their land . . . Artifacts
recovered will become the property of a museum to be built in the area. Homeowners
will be allowed to display recovered artifacts in their residences, provided they are turned
over to the museum upon their death. (Archaeology, March/April 1995: 14)
According to the state archaeologist of Colorado, such land-use plans are legal.
33 C. Dean Higginbotham, “Native Americans Versus Archaeologists: The Legal Issues,” Ameri-
can Indian Law Review, 10 (1982), 99–100.
34 Echo-Hawk, “Museum Rights,” 448.
Imperialism Then and Now 15

Genetic Imperialism and the “Common Heritage”

In what has been described as “the last great resource rush,”35 commer-
cial seed and drug industries are extracting, transforming, and commod-
ifying the valuable genetic resources of indigenous peoples. This time
around, it is not land or natural resources that imperialism has targeted,
but indigenous genetic wealth and pharmaceutical knowledge. Indigenous
peoples inhabit the most genetically diverse areas of the world, and once
again

their areas, and their knowledge, are . . . being mined – for informa-
tion. Unless indigenous rights to this material and knowledge are
respected, this gene rush will leave indigenous people in the same
hole as the other resource rushes.36

Corporate and academic scientists engaged in “gene-hunting” and

“chemical prospecting” first mine indigenous medicinal and agricultural
knowledge. They then identify and extract selected plant materials, pro-
cess these in laboratories and finally through the legal system – ultimately
transforming them into commodities and legally protected private prop-
erty, for whose use indigenous people must pay. The key first step is to
declare that these indigenous genetic resources belong to everyone. As the
“common heritage of humankind . . . to be traded as a ‘free good’ among
the community of nations,”37 they are “not owned by any one people and
are quite literally a part of our human heritage from the past.”38 Thus,
they are “looked upon as a public good for which no payment is necessary
or appropriate.”39 One may then convert these free “public” goods into
private property and a source of enormous economic profit.
A recent example is the use by the Uru-eu-wau-wau Indians of
Brazil of the bark of the Tike-Uba tree in a preparation that acts as
35 Jason Clay, “Editorial: Genes, Genius, and Genocide,” Cultural Survival Quarterly 14:4 (1990),
1. See also Al Gedicks’s discussion of resource colonialism in his The New Resource Wars: Native
and Environmental Struggles Against Multinational Corporations (Boston, Massachusetts:
South End Press, 1993): 13.
36 Ibid.
37 Norman Myers, A Wealth of Wild Species (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1983): 24.
38 Garrison Wilkes, “Current Status of Crop Germplasm,” Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences, 1:2
(1983), 156.
39 Jack Kloppenburg and Daniel Kleinman, “Seed Wars: Common Heritage, Private Property,
and Political Strategy,” Socialist Review, No. 95 (September/October 1987), 8.
16 Science, Colonialism, and Indigenous Peoples

an anticoagulant.40 Reportedly, a large U.S.-based chemical company

attempted to patent these properties of the plant,41 following a study by cor-
porate scientists of sap and bark specimens provided to them by members of
the Goiana Institute for Prehistory and Anthropology.42 The Uru-eu-wau-
wau, protesting this commercialization of their knowledge, challenged
that company’s right to patent their traditional medicines.43 However, as
Janet McGowan notes:

[M]uch like Columbus’ voyage, when it comes to U.S. patent law, it

isn’t always a question of getting there first, but having the resources to
control and protect your discovery . . . U.S. patent law really protect(s)
(and financially reward(s)) the discovery of the known.44

Despite the fact that approximately 80% of the world’s population relies
on traditional health care based on medicinal plants, and that 74% of
contemporary drugs have the same or related uses in western medicine
as they do in traditional medical systems, the pharmaceutical knowledge
and medicinal skills of indigenous peoples are neither acknowledged nor
rewarded. As one commentator observes:

Traditional remedies . . . are products of human knowledge. To trans-

form a plant into medicine, one has to know the correct species,
its location, the proper time of collection . . . , the part to be used,
how to prepare it . . . the solvent to be used . . . , the way to prepare
it . . . and, finally, posology . . . curers have to diagnose and select the
right medicine for the right patients.45

Yet although indigenous pharmaceutical knowledge, like industrial

knowledge, has been accumulated by trial and error, “it has been made
public with no patent rights attached . . . What are the ethics behind
recording customary knowledge and making it publicly available without

40 Jack Kloppenburg, “No Hunting!,” Z Magazine (September 1990), 106.

41 Clay, “Editorial,” 1.
42 John Jacobs et al., “Characterization of the Anticoagulant Activities from a Brazilian Arrow
Poison,” Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis, 63:1 (1991), 34.
43 Andrew Gray, “The Impact of Biodiversity Conservation on Indigenous Peoples,” in Vandana
Shiva (ed.), Biodiversity: Social and Ecological Perspectives (Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey:
Zed Books, 1991): 67.
44 Janet McGowan, “Who is the Inventor?,” Cultural Survival Quarterly, 15:1 (Summer 1991), 20.
45 Elaine Elisabetsky, “Folklore, Tradition, or Know-How?,” Cultural Survival Quarterly, 15:1
(Summer 1991), 10.
Imperialism Then and Now 17

adequate compensation?”46 Such questions are all the more pressing given
that this knowledge is often obtained from specialists in the indigenous
community only after the scientist “has established credibility within that
society and a position of trust with the specialist.”47 Research in ethnophar-
macology48 cannot ignore the omnipresence of pharmaceutical corpora-
tions eager “to analyze, develop, and market plant products” to secure
“exclusive rights to pertinent information” collected.49
Whereas some ethnopharmacologists have worked to develop products
managed by indigenous communities, others have been accused of “steal-
ing valuable plant materials and appropriating esoteric plant knowledge for
financial profit and professional advancement.”50 Wittingly or not, this col-
lusion of western science, business, and legal systems is a potent extractive
device:
[C]ontemporary patent systems tend to disregard the creative intelli-
gence of peoples and communities around the world. Thus the West-
ern scientific and industrial establishment freely benefits from a steady
flow of people nurtured genetic material and associated knowledge,
and, at times, after only a superficial tinkering, reaps enormous eco-
nomic profits through patents, without even token recognition, and
much less economic reward to the rightful owners of such resources.51
Rural sociologist Jack Kloppenburg describes this phenomenon as “the
commodification of the seed.”52 He notes that scientists from the advanced
industrial nations have, for more than two centuries, appropriated plant
genetic resources, yet
Despite their tremendous utility, such materials have been obtained
free of charge as the “common heritage,” and therefore common
good, of humanity. On the other hand, the elite cultivars developed
46 A.B. Cunningham, “Indigenous Knowledge and Biodiversity,” Cultural Survival Quarterly,
15:1 (Summer 1991), 4.
47 Brian Boom, “Ethics in Ethnopharmacology,” in Darrell A. Posey et al. (eds.), Ethnobiology:
Implications and Applications (Belem, Brazil: Proceedings of the First International Congress
of Ethnobiology, 1990): 150–51.
48 Defined from the perspective of the dominant science, ethnopharmacology is the “scientific
study of the medicinal uses of plants and animals by human groups other than the dominant
Western society.”(ibid., 148)
49 Ibid., 149.
50 Ibid.
51 GRAIN (Genetic Resources Action International), “GATT, the Convention and IPRs,”
Econet, in the conference ‘Biodiversity’ (28 June 1994).
52 Jack Kloppenburg, First The Seed: The Political Economy of Plant Biotechnology, 1492–2000
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988): 11.
18 Science, Colonialism, and Indigenous Peoples

by the commercial seed industries . . . are accorded the status of private

property. They are commodities obtainable by purchase.53
The process wholly discounts the tremendous investment of generations
of indigenous labor that is involved in the cultivation of specific plant vari-
eties for their medicinal and nutrient value.54 It credits solely the “chop
shop” laboratory labor of corporate and academic scientists who “modify”
what they have taken. Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, representing indigenous peo-
ples at a meeting of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Devel-
opment, underscores the exploitation and skewed reasoning that is at work:
Without our knowing these seeds and medicinal plants were altered
in laboratories and now we have to buy these because companies
had them patented . . . We are told that the companies have intellec-
tual property rights over these genetic plant materials because they
improved on them. This logic is beyond us. Why is it that we, indige-
nous peoples who have developed and preserved these plants over
thousands of years, do not have the rights to them anymore because
the laboratories altered them?55

Biocolonialism: Science and Empire

The significance of science, especially of the biological sciences, in both

empire building and in maintaining imperial domination, has finally
53 Kloppenburg and Kleinman, “Seed Wars,” 24. See also Stephen Brush’s discussion of the com-
mon heritage regime in his “The Demise of ‘Common Heritage’ and Protection for Traditional
Agricultural Knowledge” in Charles McManis (ed.), Biodiversity & the Law: Intellectual Prop-
erty, Biotechnology & Traditional Knowledge (Sterling, Virginia: Earthscan, 2007).
54 This was acknowledged by Illinois Congressman John Porter who in 1990 introduced a reso-
lution to discontinue the ongoing GATT negotiations regarding the extension of intellectual
property rights to genetic and biological resources. The difficulty with the U.S. proposal on
trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights, Porter charged, is that
it fails to consider the value of biological and genetic material and processes in developing
nations, as well as the invaluable and historic contributions of local people in the use of
that material.
Since these people typically do not have access to representation to ensure that their
interests are protected in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) process,
we have an obligation to recognize their rights.
(John Porter, “A Resolution Affecting the GATT Negotiations on Intellectual Property Rights
for Genetic and Biological Resources,” Congressional Record, 101st Congress, 2nd Session,
Vol. 136, No. 94 (20 July 1990), E 2425.)
55 Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, “We are part of biodiversity, respect our rights,” Third World Resur-
gence, 36 (1993), 25.
Imperialism Then and Now 19

begun to receive sustained attention. Even so, as Londa Schiebinger

observes in her recent study of botany and the geopolitics of plants, “his-
torians, post-colonialists, even historians of science rarely recognize the
importance of plants to the processes that form and reform human societies
and politics on a global scale.”56 Yet according to Linnaeus, the very raison
d’être of the science of natural history was to serve the state. Moreover,
in the eighteenth century, political economists “taught that exact knowl-
edge of nature was key to amassing national wealth and hence power.”57
Indeed, seeing that science served “the interests of imperial efficiency and
colonial development” was an important aspect of late nineteenth-century
European imperialism.58
Resource colonialism – the identification, appropriation, extraction, and
processing, by dominant societies, of select natural resources belonging to
other, subordinated peoples – quickly moved, in the Americas, from the
gold and silver, which drew early conquistadors, to encompass plants and
animals of numerous and varied sorts. Not only did European naturalists
collect “the stuff of nature,” Schiebinger notes, but they also “lay their own
peculiar grid of reason over nature so that nomenclatures and taxonomies
often served as ‘tools of empire.’” Botanists, for their part, were

“agents of empire”; their inventories, classifications, and transplan-

tations were the vanguard and in some cases the “instruments” of
European order.59

At the same time, formal scientific institutions (such as Britain’s Kew

Gardens) played a crucial role in the expansion of empire by generating and
disseminating scientific knowledge “which facilitated transfers of energy,
manpower, and capital on a worldwide basis and on an unprecedented
scale.”60
56 Londa Schiebinger, Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World (Cam-
bridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2004): 3.
57 Schiebinger, 5.
58 Roy MacLeod, “Reading the Discourse of Colonial Science,” in Patrick Petitjean (ed.), Les
Sciences Coloniales: Figures et Institutions (Paris: ORSTOM, 1996): 87.
59 Schiebinger, 11. See also David MacKay, “Agents of Empire: The Banksian Collectors and
Evaluation of New Land,” in David Philip Miller and Peter Reill (eds.), Visions of Empire:
Voyages, Botany and Representations of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1996): 38–57.
60 Lucile H. Brockway, Science and Colonial Expansion: The Role of the British Royal Botanical
Gardens (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2002): 6.
20 Science, Colonialism, and Indigenous Peoples

The term “biocolonialism,” as used here, may best be regarded as one

variant of neocolonialism, a relationship of dominance and oppression
between nations or peoples in which a nation, or nations, maintains power
over another nation through a variety of means other than direct govern-
mental control.61 Given the nature of contemporary globalization and of
transnational corporations, the dominant group is increasingly likely to
involve more than one nation-state. The subordinated society “is robbed of
its historical line of development, externally manipulated and transformed
according to the needs and interests”62 of the dominant group(s). Although,
as some have noted, direct colonial rule in the late twentieth century “has
all but vanished . . . the persistence of neocolonial domination . . . is unde-
niable.”63 It relies on, and actively draws upon, complex webs of power, the
intersecting strands of which buttress and strengthen one another, allowing
“certain communities to assert their influence and sovereignty over other
groups.”64 These webs may include the legal systems of dominant nation-
states that are imposed upon or otherwise impact the subordinated peoples,
trade activities (especially as conducted by transnational corporations),65
the scientific and technological knowledge industries, and the threat (or
reality) of indirect political interventions – all of which may serve as, or

61 See Kara H. Ching, “Indigenous Self-Determination in an Age of Genetic Patenting:

Recognizing an Emerging Human Rights Norm,” Fordham Law Review, 66 (1997): 687–
730.
62 Jürgen Osterhammel, Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview (Princeton, New Jersey: Markus
Wiener, 1997): 16–17.
63 Nicholas Thomas, Colonialism’s Culture (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press:
1994): 1.
64 Tony Ballantyne and Antoinette Burton, Bodies in Contact: Rethinking Colonial Encounters
in World History (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2005): 3.
65 David C. Korten, in his classic study of contemporary corporate power, contends that global
domination of weak by strong states did not end with World War II:
It simply cloaked colonialism in a less obvious, more beguiling form. The new corporate
colonialism is no more than a consequence of immutable historical forces than was
the old state colonialism. It is a consequence of conscious choices based on the pursuit
of elite interest. This elite interest has been closely aligned with the corporate interest
in advancing deregulation and economic globalization. As a consequence, the largest
transnational corporations and the global financial system have assumed increasing power
over the conduct of human affairs in the pursuit of interests increasingly at odds with
the human interest. (David C. Korten, When Corporations Rule the World, 2nd edition.
(Bloomfield, Connecticut: Kumarian Press, 2001): 173).
Imperialism Then and Now 21

enable, “mechanisms of social control, commodity transaction, exploita-

tion, and appropriation.”66
Although some theorists of neocolonialism focus their accounts on the
subordination of nation-states,67 the practice may well be most egregious
and destructive when visited upon peoples not recognized as forming sep-
arate states. This last brings the interests and ambitions of the surrounding
state – often itself subject to domination by the more powerful – into
play, especially as these states may be authorized in international fora to
protect the threatened resources and well-being of the nations within their
borders. Precisely what is ignored or overridden, in the conduct of biocolo-
nialism, are indigenous sovereignty and rights to self-determination: “the
sampling and patenting of indigenous genetic materials amounts to neo-
colonialism . . . indigenous peoples’ control over their own genetic her-
itage is an essential part of their fight for self-determination.”68 Although
the role of nation-states as imperial powers is now more complex, and
involves a richer cast of interconnected actors than was previously the
case, it remains a vital feature of neocolonial domination. As Keith Aoki
comments:

Despite many rumors of its impending demise in the era of global-

ization, news of the demise of the nation-state may be premature.
Ironically, the increasingly transnational proprietors of vast (and pri-
vate) intellectual property holdings must turn to the national legal
regimes in order to underwrite the value of their holdings.69
66 David Wade Chambers and Richard Gillespie, “Locality in the History of Science: Colonial
Science, Technoscience and Indigenous Knowledge,” Osiris, 15 (2000), 232.
67 See Kwame Nkrumah, Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism (Atlantic Highlands,
New Jersey: Humanities Press International, 1965). According to Nkrumah “The essence of
neocolonialism is that the State which is subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all
the outward trappings of international sovereignty.” (In Robert J.C. Young, Postcolonialism:
An Historical Introduction (Malden, Massachusetts: Wiley-Blackwell, 2001): 46.)
68 Federico Lenzerini, “Biogenetic Resources and Indigenous Peoples’ Rights,” in Francesco
Francioni (ed.), Biotechnologies and International Human Rights (Portland, Oregon: Hart
Publishing, 2007): 197.
69 Keith Aoki, “Neocolonialism, Anticommons Property, and Biopiracy in the (Not-So-Brave)
New World Order of International Intellectual Property Protection” Indiana Journal of Global
Legal Studies 6 (1998): 50. While I agree that the concept of sovereignty is undergoing sig-
nificant transformation (see Chapter 8), I am not convinced either that this has progressed
as far as (or that the effective role of nation-states is as diminished as) contemporary theo-
rists Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri suggest in their Empire (Cambridge, Massachusetts:
Harvard University Press, 2000).
22 Science, Colonialism, and Indigenous Peoples

It is important that biocolonialism not be held to turn on intent.70 A

host of different agents – no doubt with a host of different intentions –
contributed to the biocolonialist venture captured in Exhibit Three: the
anthropologists and botanists who mined Guajajara medical knowledge
to identify and locate Pilocarpus; the laboratory scientists who isolated
the active ingredient, transforming it into a novel invention that could
be converted into private patented property; and the politicians, chief
executive officers, lawyers, and entrepreneurs in Brazil and those employed
by the pharmaceutical corporations who processed and marketed the result
as a glaucoma treatment.71
Whether a specific project or practice is biocolonialist depends on the
consequences of agency, not the agent’s intent – whether the agents in
question are scientists, corporations, or states. Although intent may be

70 As Lawrence Hinman (Ethics: A Pluralistic Approach to Moral Theory (Belmont, California:

Thomson Wadsworth, 3rd edition, 2003)) notes, when our concern is to assess the moral
correctness of legislation, we focus on its effects on people, not on the intentions of those who
passed the legislation (which may vary and be venal). In doing this, he suggests, we are not
necessarily denying that individual intentions are important on some level but are rather
confining our attention to a level on which those intentions become largely irrelevant.
This is particularly appropriate in the case of policy decision by governments, corporations,
or groups. In such cases, there may be a diversity of different intentions that one may want
to treat as essentially private matters when assessing the moral worth of the proposed law,
policy, or action. (p. 155)
Such a parsing of the role of intention versus consequences is also embedded in proposals
for a functional definition of genocide advanced by Ward Churchill in Since Predator Came
(Littleton, Colorado: Aegis Publications, 1995), whose discussion of it is drawn upon here.
71 Some suppose that “northern bioprospectors” cannot be held responsible for their part in such
destructive practices because other agents are involved in biocolonialism: “Accusations that
commercial development is inflicting environmental damage, though justifiable to some
degree, should not be laid at the feet of northern bioprospectors . . . .If jaborandi bushes
are being overharvested for their pharmacologically active leaves, the depletion should not
be blamed on Merck & Company. Responsibility for this plant’s decline does not rest with
the multinational pharmaceutical company . . . Rather, the government of Brazil is account-
able for its failure to control access to jaborandi . . . ” Jim Chen, “There’s No Such Thing As
Biopiracy . . . and It’s a Good Thing Too,” McGeorge Law Review, 37 (2006): 13. One problem
with this reasoning is that it supposes that responsibility for foreseen harms cannot be shared.
Furthermore, the likelihood of such harmful consequences cannot morally be legitimately
screened off; it constitutes a reason for refraining from such practices. Whether these conse-
quences are intended or merely foreseen is irrelevant to whether those involved are responsible
for them. For a detailed discussion of these issues, see Alison McIntyre, “Doing Away with
Double Effect,” Ethics 111:2 (2001). For a simpler discussion, albeit in a different context, see
Alan W. Clarke and Laurelyn Whitt, The Bitter Fruit of American Justice (University Press of
New England: Lebanon, New Hampshire, 2007): 149–50.
Imperialism Then and Now 23

relevant to an assessment of culpability, it is not relevant to the identifica-

tion of some activity or project as biocolonialist. This case demonstrates the
futility and inadequacy of tying an occurrence of biocolonialism to the pre-
sence, absence, or predominance of any particular intent. Rather, the
impact – material, political, socioeconomic, cultural, and environmental –
of such activity upon a people is central in its characterization as
biocolonialist.72 What sorts of impacts are relevant to a determination
of biocolonialism? Having a workable definition of extractive biocolonial-
ism in hand would be of practical and strategic value in resisting it. To
be effectively combated, the phenomenon itself must be recognized and
acknowledged for what it is.
I propose the following as an account of biocolonialism. As it pertains
to indigenous peoples, extractive biocolonialism may be understood as
any activity that (a) through the use of force or coercion (economic or
otherwise), involves or facilitates the removal, processing, conversion into
private property, and commodification of indigenous genetic resources by
agents of the dominant culture(s), and (b) typically results in some or all
of the following:

1. substantial damage to the environment, such that a peoples’ way of

life is destroyed, undermined, or threatened;
2. erosion of indigenous health and well-being, whether physical or
spiritual;
3. destabilization of indigenous social, economic, and legal structures;
4. creation of new, or the exacerbation of existing, internal or external
political struggles;
5. disruption or discrediting of indigenous knowledge and value systems;
6. imposition of concepts, practices, and values that further the eco-
nomic and political interests of the dominant culture;
72 There is also this essential question to address: Who calculates the consequences? Hinman
observes that it makes a difference when one group in society does the calculating for another
group; it is all too easy for those calculations to become miscalculations.
This is, at least in part, an epistemological point. Many would argue that those most
directly affected by consequences are in the best position to estimate the importance
of those consequences for themselves. There is also a moral and a psychological point
here. The moral one is that those who will bear the consequences should have a voice in
determining those consequences. The psychological one is that people are more likely
to bear onerous consequences when they themselves have had a voice in choosing them.
(Ethics, 160)
24 Science, Colonialism, and Indigenous Peoples

7. loss of political and economic autonomy and increased dependency

on the dominant culture(s); and
8. assimilation and loss of biological and cultural diversity.

This account may be of value in demonstrating how the Guajajara case

in Exhibit Three, the Guaymi case in Exhibit Four, and the Human
Genome Diversity Project considered in Chapter 4 may, for all their
differences, appropriately be judged biocolonialist. Moreover, it is flexi-
ble enough to produce a continuum along which biocolonialist projects
can be arranged by severity of impact. It is, however, a working pro-
posal that needs and invites further development. What is clear, however,
is that the term “biopiracy” (which frequently appears in the literature
on this topic73 and is often used interchangeably with “biocolonialism”)
fails to capture the full scope of the phenomenon sketched here. Biocolo-
nialism is not exclusively a matter of theft or of economic deprivation
undertaken by a band of scofflaws that can be ameliorated, if not exon-
erated, by the provision of funds.74 It is not, as Edward Said has noted
of both imperialism and colonialism, “a simple act of accumulation and
acquisition.”75 The term biocolonialism, unlike biopiracy, brings the mat-
ter of indigenous sovereignty and self-determination – and its violation –
directly to the fore. The protection of indigenous knowledge and genetic
resources

is not just a theoretical question of confronting misappropriation and

abuse; it is a question of political status and recognition. Inherent in
the protection of traditional knowledge and cultural heritage is the
73 Ikechi Mgbeoji’s Global Biopiracy: Patents, Plants and Indigenous Knowledge (Ithaca, New
York: Cornell University Press, 2006) is one of many examples. It offers an excellent analysis of
these concerns as they are posed for nation-states (i.e., primarily for the industrialized North
vs. the ‘westernizing’ South), especially as regards intellectual property issues.
Biopiracy has been defined as “the unauthorized extraction of biological resources and/or
associated traditional knowledge from developing countries, or to the patenting of spurious
‘inventions’ based on such knowledge or resources without compensation.” Graham Dut-
field, Intellectual Property, Biogenetic Resources and Traditional Knowledge (Sterling, Virginia:
Earthscan, 2004): 52.
74 More inadequate yet is “bioprospecting,” maintaining as it does an aura of a harmless hunting
about that wholly divorces itself from context, history, and consequence. In both biopiracy and
bioprospecting, the presence or absence of monetary compensation may well be a determina-
tive factor. This is not the case in biocolonialism.
75 Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Random House, 1993): 9.
Imperialism Then and Now 25

protection of the land on which indigenous knowledge is practiced

and perpetuated.76

This is an issue that we will explore in Chapter 8.

The introduction of monocultures and the attendant undermining of
plant genetic diversity (via “development” debacles such as the Green
Revolution)77 is one form of biocolonialism. Another is extractive bio-
colonialism – where valued genetic resources and information are sought,
“discovered,” and removed to the microworlds of biotechnoscience. There,
they are legally christened the private intellectual property of individ-
uals, corporations, and universities; transformed into commodities; and
placed for sale in genetic marketplaces, such as the American Type Cul-
ture Collection. In this manner, the commercial seed industry and the
pharmaceutical industry have commodified the plant genetic resources
and traditional medicines of indigenous peoples, along with their agri-
cultural and medicinal knowledge. The controversy over the Human
Genome Diversity Project and the commodification of the cell lines of
indigenous peoples, examined in Part II, is only one phase of this strug-
gle. They are, indeed, more of the same, as law professor Keith Aoki
notes:

While patenting a cell line from an indigenous person may be a

particularly egregious form of biocolonialism, it may be entirely con-
sistent with Western practices rooted in the not too distant past. For
example, a high percentage of the genetic resources that the United
States uses in its own agricultural production originated from uncom-
pensated sources in the Third World. No compensation was paid for
these resources because such genetic resources were seen as a product
of nature. At virtually the same moment it became technologically
possible to alter these “products” genetically, the Supreme Court held
them to be patentable.78

76 Danielle Conway-Jones, “Safeguarding Traditional Knowledge and Cultural Heritage: Sup-

porting the Right to Self-Determination and Preventing the Commodification of Culture,”
Howard Law Journal, 48 (2005): 754.
77 See generally, Vandana Shiva, The Violence of the Green Revolution (Atlantic Highlands, New
Jersey: Zed Books Ltd, 1991).
78 Keith Aoki, “The Stakes of Intellectual Property Law,” in David Kairys (ed.), The Politics of
Law (New York, New York: Basic Books, 1982, 1998): 273.
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